Debrief VI: Russell’s ‘I Heart Huckabees’
When I was in high school, I had a teacher who promised us if we ever had a bad day that if we went home and watched Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot that that film would cure all our frustrations. It’s screwball nature had the power to put things into perspective. This debrief is...
Debrief V: Antonioni’s ‘The Passenger’
In my first year of university, I took a film studies course without truly knowing what I was getting myself into. I knew that I “loved movies” but had zero exposure to anything outside of the heavily marketed products of Hollywood. Sure, ‘Fight Club’ is a cool movie, but I didn’t even know there was...
Debrief IV: Kassovitz’ ‘La Haine’
La Haine (Hate, in English) is laid out as a document; one day in the life of three disaffected youth and their struggle with life in the Parisian ghetto. Kassovitz deftly blends documentary style photography with the poignant placement of sensitive and surreal scenes. One might even consider this an example of poetic documentary.
Debrief III: Redford’s ‘Ordinary People’
In my previous post, I promised an English-language film and I have followed through on that. Lately, I’ve been seeking out directorial debuts, as well as films based on novels. One of the films I took in at TIFF this year was Robert Redford’s The Conspirator. Leading up to that screening, I went back and...
Debrief II: Alfredson’s ‘Let the Right One In’
“To flee is life. To linger, death.” To say that the vampire trend has sprung up lately is a bit misguided. We humans are obsessed with death and, consequently, the romance of potential eternal life. Gothic literature has, debatably, been around since the mid-1700s. Nowadays, the vampire myth is dominated by Twilight and, to a...
Debrief I: Godard’s ‘Breathless’
Throughout the 50s, a young Jean-Luc Godard wrote for the now famous Parisian film magazine, Cahiers du Cinema. He, along with other soon-to-be influential filmmakers Truffaut, Chabrol and Rohmer, revolutionized what came to be respected as film criticism and film theory. These men established the term “auteur”, recognizing the director as the true author of...
DANdy Film Debrief
welcome to our new monthly segment entitled DANdy Film Debrief. look forward to the first of each month, where the brilliant photographer (destined-for-fame) director Dan Dziuba (@thatsadandyidea) will share with us dope films to watch and examine, accompanied with his review. covering all genres, Dan’s suggestions will give us all interesting films that we might...
